Lecture 2 Flashcards
Power and the environment
Theory
o How we look shapes what we see.
o What we see shapes what we think can, should or must be done.
o Theorein = to consider, speculate or look at.
Theoros = spectator
Thea = a view
Horan = to see
Political ecology
o Sees environment through lens of power.
o Highlights how power shapes environment.
o Power dynamics between people can structure.
Access to resources, distribution of environmental goods and bads, ways environmental issues are defined, addressed and prioritized, physical contours and composition of material environs.
Key concepts political ecology
Ecology, political economy and marginality.
Power characterizes economics and ecology.
* The implications are that the environment is socially constructed. Environment and nature aren’t the opposite of society and culture, but interconnected with them. Environmental disrepair is a social, political and economic challenge, not merely a technical or scientific one, and so will require social, political and economic response.
Neoliberalism
the free market is the most efficient, equal and neutral way to allocate (scarce) resources. Dominant political, economic and political economy ideology.
Influence of neoliberalism
Neoliberalism informed development economics in 1980s Chile and way Chileans interacted with their environment. Neoliberal thought encouraged developing nation-states, like Chile, to privatize and marketize natural resources in order to increase exports and grow their economies.
Budds analysis of Chilean privatization
Following this logic, Chilean government privatized water rights.
On Budds’ analysis, this ultimately increased water scarcity and aggravated social inequality.
1981 Pinochet government rewrites Chilean water code = water remains public property but state grants private rights of use, which can be bought and sold. Expected to increase efficiency of water use by channelling it into high value products.
Water code incentivizes private investment in lucrative, export driven commercial agriculture, namely water-intensive, fruit production. (vs subsistence agriculture and production for national markets).
This increases demand for water and rights of use, which largest producers lay claim to
Power therefore shapes the agricultural producers’ ability to compete for, access and use water. Chilean state’s compliance with tenets of neoliberalism.
Carbon democracy (Mitchell)
- Different energy regimes can support different kinds of politics. By facilitating different kinds of political activity and empowering different kinds of actors.
The material properties of different natural resources and the way that societies use them can impact politics.
o Mitchell is focused on the politics of this.
Mitchell’s analysis of the coal regime
19th century coal regime supported mass democratic politics = extraction, production and transportation was worker intensive. Which empowered workers to make demands others had to listen to. Workers used this power (striking, sabotaging railways) to democratizing ends, such as enfranchisement.
Mitchell’s analysis of the oil regime
20th and 21st century oil regime undermined mass democratic politics = extraction, production and transportation (liquid form -> pipelines) was not worker intensive. Which made it harder for workers to translate labor power into political power.
Depoliticization
removes an issue from politics, closing it to democratic contestation and deliberation. Decouples an issue from questions about language and power.
Post politics
rejects disagreement. Champions consensus or particular political viewpoint framed as if it were a universally agreed on perspective. Endows consensus with normative power while also obscuring this power.
Priorities depoliticization and post politics
o Depoliticization and post politics prioritize a) expert led social administration and b) technical managerial order.
o This has 2 implications = governance and policy-making tend to affirm the status quo. Politics becomes something experts do, not something democratic citizens do.
Environmental depoliticization = Swyngedouw
Question of how best to respond to environmental degradation is closed to public deliberation. Because we all allegedly already agree on what must be done, reduce the amount of CO2 in the air by commodifying carbon. Framed as a point of consensus, this perspective becomes difficult to challenge or otherwise critique.
Depoliticization and nature discourse = Swyngedouw
Three common discursive invocations of nature. Nature as floating signifier or montage (tends to slip into the imaginary). Nature as law or norm (anchor for ethical judgement). Nature as desire for harmony (symbolic desire, longing for unity and connection, dream world of sustainable plenty).
All of which are depoliticizing. Because they present nature as a fixed entity with a fixed and so incontestable meaning. Standard ways of talking about nature locate it beyond politics and public deliberation. Nature discourse disavows heterogeneity, unpredictability and social construction in favor of attributing static meaning to a homogenized and singular nature.
Depoliticization and climate discourse
Climate change discourse is strangely bifurcated. Discourse 1 – climate change poses an apocalyptic threat to human survival. Discourse 2 – nothing fundamentally needs to change; existing social, political and economic institutions just need to be reformed, while preserving capitalism.
How Swyngedouw asks, can these two seemingly antithetical sensibilities both be so central to climate change discourse and policy?
What unites them is their depoliticizing effect. Discourse 1 – achieves this effect by invoking crisis and delegitimating conflict. Discourse 2 – achieves this effect by suggesting existing institutions are environmentally irreproachable.
